Sean,

Don't worry about the pic, that's good enough.

Trust me, I know how you feel. :D

I would much rather see pictures of your cabinets.

Good going Sean! :)

That roller cam follower seems to have a potential problem; The difference in diameter between the roller, and the shaft, needs to be quite big. The roller needs to reach in behind the car and fill the space where the rack has been removed.....if that makes sense??

gerald,
your concerns are noted. As you mention, the roller height needs to reach up and under the rail to "capture" the rail. The roller as you see it is undersized in diameter by almost 1/2 inch. To make up the difference, I offset the shaft mounting hole in adapter plate vertically 3/8. On my machine it appears to work with no modifications. The cam follower "touches" 3/4" of the underside of the angle iron and "hangs" off by 1/8 due to its width being 7/8" This change is not for everyone, it was an item I had in stock at the shop.
I don't recommend anyone try this modification unless they know all the implications.
Thanks for all your great advice and oversight - its really nice to have an owners/assembly manual with feedback.

It is the yellow plate on the right that worried me:

its close! But for now it works. If not, I have the proper bearing per plan with the 50mm OD. It would just take a few
minutes to mount it. Thanks for the follow up. I am certain all the lurkers on the forum are watching!

The forum seems to have died down a lot over the last two days - do you guys now have grass that needs mowing? :D

I have, I am posting pics for suggestion in my personnel page.:)

Today was a good day.
Leko was in florida visiting and came by to help with the Orlando Mechmate!
We got all the shielded cable for the steppers and the 12/3 SO cable run through the cable chains.
Next, is to get all the connectors on and button stations mounted.

Gerald,
The cam follower ended up being to close for comfort on clearance. I mounted the proper bearing today and all works well. I will post pics when I remember my camera!

Thanks Matthew for helping....a good 2 hours well spent on the MM!

#5 Is ALIVE!
 

Finally,

In the immortal words of Dr. Frankenstein .... IT'S ALIVE!
That day has come when the blue steel in my shop sings, moves, dances and even remembers when to go home!

I have a little Mach 3 debugging and set-up, but otherwise all working well and responding to program feed.

I have to tune the motors and a little wiring clean-up....but we just might try and cut something tomorrow....we will see!

Oh happy day. :cool:

Very cool Sean,

Pictures as soon as you can. :)

Congratulations on getting it moving! I'm still dreaming about that day.:)

CONGRATULATIONS bubba!!!! I'm really happy for you. Feels good doesn't it?

Go Sean! :)

Congratulations Sean!! Pretty soon Gerald is going to need to add a section on the forum for showing off projects completed with the working MechMates.

Sean,
Congratulations. Hope to see some more of your great pictures and your first cut. :)

Good going Sean!! :cool:

Congratulations Sean!!! As a fellow NCSA alum, the "build" has been interesting and looking forward to seeing the "performance". "Break a leg" !!!

Yaaaaaaaaahooooooo, we're cutting MDF baby!
 

Proof is in the pudding guys and gals.
We have officially cut the Roadrunner.tap file and the first part of the MechMate logo file. There seems to be an issue with the License copy of Mach3 I purchased, and is only allowing me to cut 100 lines of code. Tech Support is working on getting me a new license number.

Anyway...here's the pics!

Thanks for all the kind words everyone. But the congrats go to Gerald. This machine is easy to make, use and set up. Heck, I have already tried to break it and have successfully failed!
Now it's time to pack it up and move to it's new home in Bay #4 of my plant...about a 600 FT move, then the squaring / leveling process begins.

Sean

So, it's blue and it cuts wood, but does it have the logo? Swop you a serial number for the logo! :D

Well done! Actually didn't expect anything less...;)

When you have more time on it, would like to hear your impressions vis-à-vis the Multicam that you have some experience with.

thanks for the pictures Sean.

That looks GREAT !!!!

The excitement is too much for me, so I took a day of vacation to work on the beast. :)

Its alive, and its almost No 5 - well done Sean

Sean, remenber on Oct 7th in your post #1 you said you calculated a bill of $6818.32? So how many cents were you off? :)

Stefan,
It was close, but I was under budget!
6482.00. I guess I have a few dollars left over to buy some new router bits now!
Of course, I will use all the 300 or so dollars left in the budget to put limits on the machine.
So, the original number is a real budget for me using 5 geckos, 5 motors, new computer, Mach3, a couple of grinders and lots of time.
Sean

Sean, with the risk of you disappearing now that you no longer need us :)
I'll be in Orlando mid next month, if you are open for a tour and a chat, I would love to stop by and see the Mechmate. I can bring a Haitian bottle of rhum to celebrate! Let me know and I'll send you a PM.

Stefan

disappear. Never, I have to start on machine #2 now for my brother. Same 5x10 with spindle, vac holdown and dust collection. No indexer on his. He cuts only plastic sheet.
Your welcome to stop by. Just pm me the dates. Next month is busy, but I am sure we can fit it all in.
Sean

update.
I ordered the proximity sensors, relays, wiring tonight from factorymation. I also sent the plot files for all the logos off to my sign shop. I should be properly logo'D tomorrow.
I ran some cutting tests today.
Statistics.
25khz
203 geckos
7.2 sg motors
20t pinions.
Average cutting speed max@ 150 ipm
45khz @ 190ipm.
Performance at 5 ipm really smooth and slow.
So far, so good :)
if I feel I really need more speed, I'll change to larger pinions. But for now, I am really pleased with the cut chips on the mdf and birch core ply with the 1/2" end mill.

J.R. and I were routinely cutting mdf at 120ipm with a 1/4in downcut spiral (solid carbide). We got a pretty good cut at 240 also.

Marc
Did you cut through 3/4" mdf in one pass or multiple passes? If multiple passes, at what depth per pass were those cuts?

Paul

My experience with my MechMate was using 1/2" carbide bits and cutting MDF or Ply in the 90 to 120 ipm routinely. The 1/4" bit does let me cut faster. But, as all cutting tools know, it's about the chip, not the speed! Typically, I used 2 passes on my other table due to the vacuum hold down didn't like that much side force. 1 was easy to do, but I often sacrificed tool life due to the heat generated by cutting that much MDF in one pass.

Mr. Richards had written as nice thread earlier in the year on "tearing paper" sounds....

We cut usually in 2-3 passes. We were just learning and wanted to minimize side forces using minimal clamps.

We cut some 1/2in. CPVC (the solid not the expanded stuff) pretty much in one pass just to experiment. Got a fair amount of chatter. Didn't have enough clamps on it and pulled it out from under two clamps resulting in a broken bit. The only bit we broke but we learned what we could and couldn't do.

Interesting. Thanks for the reply.

Paul

All done, logo's and all!
 

Leko came by the shop tonight to help me tune the drives, do some squaring of the machine and take a few photos. As you can see, it's official. MechMate Blue with pretty white logo's!

Thanks Gerald! I can't wait to start machine #2 and build a bonified Mamba to match this one!

May I have a number please?

There you go! Number 5 is yours! :D

Well, I found out a few things tonight.
1) I realized how fast you can really drive the machine before you de-rail the gantry....it's about 210ipm with a 1/2" double flute carbide dull bit :eek:
2) How quickly this is going to get to work....2 units of MDF ordered and ready for cutting on Thursday - about 88 sheets.
3) How really well the machine sets up. I did the "squaring" sheet cut, flip and check as in the Gerald tutorial - I was dead on parallel and square first try. NO shims necessary! I was truly flabbergasted that I built this baby this square. Less than a .020 change between 0,0 and 0,48.

That is the thing that gives me the most satisfaction. This beast can earn its keep. It might not give the finest of finishes, or have fancy shiny alu frames, but it is a workhorse that you build and maintain yourself.

Sean, I would still like to hear your comment on this animal compared to the Multicams you have some experience with.

Gerald,
You can count on it. I actually will visit my old 4896 multicam next week and take photo's as a reference to post with results. Additionally, the other machine we had here the shop, A 4896 Warthog will be in the pros/cons review as well. I will post a nice summary and "shoot off" in the next couple of weeks once I have run a few units of product through the tool bit :)

Looking forward to it, but don't rush.

Sean,

Congratulations. Looks great!!!

Congratulations Sean. There was a time when I considered going after that #5 number.:rolleyes:
I think I'm going to stay under 210 ipm, thanks for the warning.